EXCLUSIVE: Bollard Group selling its strip malls, seeks $200M

In what could be the biggest retail deal of the year, the Bollard Group, a Boston venture capital firm, is selling its strip mall portfolios in Massachusetts and New Jersey, the Boston Business Journal has learned.

In the 1990s, Bollard, led by its president Anastasios Parafestas, paid $96.6 million for the 28 Class B centers including the Micro Center mall on Memorial Drive in Cambridge which also has a Starbucks and Sleepy’s, Vinnin Square in Swampscott which is anchored by Marshalls, Meadow Plaza in Westborough, home to Mill Stores, and in Dorchester on Morrissey Boulevard, the National Wholesale Liquidators strip center.

Real estate sources say the deal could fetch as much as $200 million as the company seeks to cash in on their retail real estate holdings. In December, the company sold the Banana Republic store it owned on Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay for $26.7 million. The four-story, 19,041-square-foot retail property was purchased by Bollard’s Anastasios Parafestas in 1995 for $3.1 million. It is assessed at $7 million by the city of Boston.

HFF in Boston is handling the sale and declined to comment. Chip Lang, asset manager for the Bollard Group, did not return a call seeking comment.

In August, Boylston Properties and the Wilder Cos. paid $70.5 million for the Arsenal Mall and the adjacent Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates building on Arsenal Street in Watertown. But the Bollard deal is excepted to surpass that sales price, sources said.